Cathy Williams is a passionate mathematics educator, author, and advocate for innovative teaching. With over 18 years as a high school mathematics teacher and AVID coordinator, followed by a decade as a mathematics administrator in San Diego County, Cathy has dedicated her career to transforming how students and teachers engage with mathematics.

As the co-founder and Executive Director of youcubed.org at Stanford University, Cathy has played a pivotal role in developing research-based curricula, coaching educators, and delivering professional development worldwide. 

Cathy now brings her expertise to Data Minds, a book designed to help teachers across all subjects seamlessly integrate data into their classroom instruction. Data Minds empowers educators to prepare students for a world driven by information and critical thinking.

Book discount code: SAVE20

For 16 years Diana was a secondary social studies teacher in Wisconsin, Kansas, Arizona and Pennsylvania. She most recently taught at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, an inquiry-driven, project-based high school focused on modern learning. Her practice has deep roots in experiential education, taking students from the classroom to the real world and back again. Prior to her work in Philadelphia, she was in Flagstaff, AZ where she was named Technology Teacher of the Year for Arizona and a member of the Governor's Master Teacher Corps. Diana was featured on TED.com for her “How to Learn? From Mistakes” and recognized for earning National Board Certification. 

In 2013, Diana Laufenberg co-founded Inquiry Schools, a non-profit working to create and support student centered learning environments that are inquiry driven, project based and utilizing modern technology.

Ji Y. Son is Professor of Psychology at California State University at Los Angeles and director of the Learning Lab at Cal State LA. She is a co-author of the interactive textbook "Introduction to Statistics: A Modeling Approach" published using CourseKata.org. Her PhD in Cognitive Science and Psychology is from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is interested in how basic psychological processes (from cognition to social belonging) foster rich and transferable learning. Her work examines methods of applying these psychological insights at scale to issues like mathematics remediation and student success. The central idea behind Ji’s work is that learning changes the way we see the world.

John B. King Jr. served in President Barack Obama’s cabinet as the tenth U.S. Secretary of Education. Over the course of his extensive and influential career in public education, he has been a high school social studies teacher, a middle school principal, the first African American and Puerto Rican to serve as New York State Education Commissioner, a college professor, and the president and CEO of the Education Trust, a national education civil rights organization.

King is currently the chancellor of the State University of New York (SUNY), the nation’s largest comprehensive system of public higher education. Both of King’s parents were career New York City public school educators. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, an education researcher and former teacher, and his two daughters.

After graduating cum laude from Duke University with a B.A. in Public Policy Studies in 1994, Jonathan Becker received a law degree and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from Boston College Law School and the Boston College Graduate School of Education in 1997. Additionally, in May of 2003, he earned a Ph.D. in the Politics of Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. From September 2002 to August 2007, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Foundations, Leadership and Policy Studies in the School of Education and Allied Human Services at Hofstra University. After moving to Virginia Commonwealth University where he served as an assistant professor of educational leadership from 2007-2012, Becker became the director of innovation and online academic programs. Having done that from 2012 through 2017, he is now back in the Department of Educational Leadership at VCU as an associate professor.

Katherine is a research-to-practice connector. A cognitive and learning scientist by training, Katherine has worked across academia, government, and industry to ensure the best scientific insights support student learning, no matter the context. Katherine served as lead learning scientist in Pearson’s Efficacy & Learning division, where she led the creation of Pearson’s Learning Design Principles — a scalable, research-informed toolkit used to design and evaluate digital learning products.

She holds a BA in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from University of Rochester, a MS and PhD in Psychology & Human Development from Vanderbilt University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Arizona State University where she scaled up the ICAP Framework across area middle and high schools.

Maggie Beiting-Parrish is an internal subject matter expert on AI and education and an FAS Impact Fellow alumnus. She served at the Department of Education, where she applied text analysis to improve the automated scoring of student learning products. Previously, she was an NYC Teaching Fellow and worked as a researcher and curriculum developer for special populations. Her expertise spans qualitative and quantitative research, with a focus on psychometrics, machine learning, and test design and analysis. She earned her PhD in Educational Psychology – Quantitative Methods from the CUNY Graduate Center.

Meghan served as the Chief of Staff in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the U.S. Department of Education. She also worked as the director of policy and advocacy at the National Center for Learning Disabilities. Meghan has experience serving as a legal advocate for incarcerated youth and as a therapist for children with academic, behavioral and emotional challenges. Meghan holds a JD and MSW from the Catholic University of America.

Michael Klein is Senior Director for Preparedness and Response at the Institute for Security and Technology (IST), where he focuses on improving the resilience of “target rich, cyber poor” critical infrastructure sectors.

Most recently, as the US Department of Education’s (ED) Senior Advisor for Cybersecurity, Michael led ED’s K-12 cybersecurity work with the National Security Council, Office of the National Cyber Director, CISA, FBI, the Intelligence Community, as well as State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) partners, and the private sector. 

Michael was a school district IT Director. He has also led coaching for a team of educational consultants, helped grow 2 edtech startups, taught elementary school in Brooklyn and Harlem, and served as a founding teacher at a High Tech High school just south of San Diego.